I do not know what happened. I was sitting at a Starbucks with a warm cup of hot chocolate. A pair of children made silly faces at me through the window, and I laughed. For a moment. I laughed. I turned my head back to the work in front of me, typing words into another paper for my writing class—a class I loved, for the professor I admired, for the dragging determination that I would continue on, in spite of everything. Certainly, I was miserable, but that was something to be overcome, to fight against; I would make it as long as hope remained.
—
How was it then, that moments later I became hopeless?
—
I see myself sitting on the train, watching soft night descend on city lights. Watching apartment buildings for glimpses of lives I'd never know, hoping to catch the shadow of some lamp, the face of a curious onlooker, watching me as I watched them. Life, at its purest essence. Humanity has always been the same.
Half an hour later, with hot water streaming down my face, I slipped into the bottom of the bathtub and tried to chase out the thoughts. Head underwater. The sound of artificial rain on my ears. Eyes closed. Breath held.
It wasn't death I was hoping for, it was paradise. It was a glimpse of the divine and a promise of eternal life—everlasting consciousness. I didn't want to die, you see, I wanted to make certain I would live forever. I wanted to know what my mother felt when I was born, when she almost died, when she heard the voice of god and knew paradise.
I felt my body plead for oxygen. I felt my heart skip a beat. I felt cold darkness echo back to me the same way it did each time I prayed to god and begged for some promise of hope. I felt the unforgiving silence again, and nothing more.
Instinct took control and I lifted my head from the water, gasping at air the way I grasped for hope.
I still don't know what happened; I don't know what made me so afraid of dying that I wanted to risk life.
—
I keep telling them I want to be dumb. If I were dumb, I wouldn't think about it; it wouldn't bother me. Like a bird I would live and I would die and would care very little for eternity.
—
What I understand of neuroscience and physics, what I know of thermodynamics, makes me think eternal consciousness is impossible.
—
What I know about religion and philosophy is that this is the ultimate question. Or as Camus said: “There is only one really serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that”
It's the ultimate question because no one truly knows the answer.
—
Is that what made it happen again? Is that why I had to run away? The deepest and yet most absurd question—is that really what made me leave school for the third time?
I know it's not of course. It was more than that. It was an inability to keep going, it was a loss of hope and an outpouring of fear. It was everything and nothing.
—
I beg god again, for something, really anything. But like all those days, those endless hours sitting, curled at the bottom of my closet pleading, I meet silence and darkness and emptiness. I meet the very thing I fear, and the thing which has taken over my OCD, and anxiety, and led me to the deepest depression I have ever known. I hope for certainty where I cannot have it.
—
There are two things I know:
1. I do not have any reason to hope for eternal life. Death, like every other thing in this world, seems physical, temporal.
2. Without the hope of eternal consciousness, I have no reason to enjoy living, no reason to hope for anything. Hope, at that point, becomes temporary, and seemingly useless.
—
There is no reason for me to say any of this, of course. I am not asking for anything, not looking for someone to tell me to just have faith, not looking for anyone to tell me not to.
—
My obsessions have fixated on ideas of aging and death. (Time is so short. "It is later than you think.") I sank into depression. I left school again because I was simply, physically unable to continue on, even though this time I thought I would make it.
Until that moment, that second on the train watching the world go by I was okay.
Now, I need to know that I will be okay forever—literally forever—or I don't know if I will ever quite be okay again.
Without a hope for everything, is there a hope for anything?
—
No, I haven't given up all hope. I hope for a someday (and for an eternal someday.) I hope to find some sense of spirituality, some presence or peace from some god, some little spark of light in the echoing darkness. I hope. But I do not expect—I do not know.
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